Apologies to those who’ve missed my blog posts. I started graduate school (MBA) this semester and just haven’t found the time or energy to blog. Last week, I took a much needed vacation to play disc golf with some buddies (hereafter known as the DGRT – disc golf road trip). Since I’m horribly inept at throwing a disc (I got a little better toward the end), the highlight of the DGRT for me was our evening ventures out in search of excellent local food.

Thanks to Chris F., we scored some seriously awesome grub on the DGRT including this little beauty from the Burger Barge right on the river. I highly recommend the Burger Barge to all you carnivores out there who might ever pass through Peoria.

Just in case you’re having a hard time determining what exactly is on this burger, it’s a nine-ounce beef patty, a boneless pork chop and a chicken breast. I must say, eating this was one of the greatest American (I lived in Italy for two years so nothing stateside even comes close) culinary experiences of my life.

I was at the same time excited and disappointed in Sarah Palin’s speech last night. She certainly showed she had the confidence and poise to be a vice-presidential candidate, but I could have done without the attack dog routine.

The normally silent janitor in my building was talking up a storm this morning about Sarah Palin, so my sense is that she’s rallying the base and perhaps getting a second look from conservative democrats in small-town America.

What do you think? Was this all rhetoric and no substance or is she the real deal? Will the GOP get a bigger bounce from this convention than the Democrats got from theirs?

There’s an interesting story behind the photo in this post. Yesterday, I interviewed a student for a part-time job with my department. I work in communication and relationship managment for an IT department and one of the primary things I look for when I hire someone is his or her ability to take highly technical and complicated concepts and synthesize them down in a way that your grandma would understand. Some people’s grandmas are rocket scientists, I know, but most people’s grandmas aren’t very tech-savvy. Mine has never turned on a computer or used the Internet.

So on this person’s resume, cricket was listed as a hobby. I had the bright idea to hand the interviewee a dry erase marker, slide my whiteboard over and ask for an explanation of cricket. I figured this was a technical subject that I knew nothing about and thus, would make a good exercise in determining whether or not this individual could communicate. The results are as follows:

I still have no idea how the game of cricket is played. I know Kevin Peterson is a English-born cricket player on the South African team, but otherwise I couldn’t tell you much about the game. This wasn’t necessarily the fault of the student I interviewed. I pretty sure I understood the words being spoken to me, they just didn’t all fit together to describe a game that made sense

I’m going to add a somewhat subjective criteria for what is or isn’t a sport. If a moderately intelligent person can’t undertsand the rules explained in their native language, then it’s not a sport.

It’s nice being validated by writers in the mainstream media. Check out article on sports that should be kicked out of the Olympics by Time Magazine’s Hannah Beech. I’ve sort of had this lingering misgiving about some of the more girly sports that I couldn’t quite articulate. It’s not that they don’t require athletic ability, it’s just that they’re so, well, girly. The writer of this article sums it up nicely (referring to rhythimic gymnastics and synchronized swimming):

The problem with both events, in my mind, is that the girly bits overshadow the athletic parts. Synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics involve such copious amounts of cosmetics that they make a Texas beauty pageant look sedate. Yes, thighs strain with effort, but I’m distracted by the twirling toes and the bleached teeth framed by rictus smiles. And the accoutrements of rhythmic gymnastics — the hoop, the swirling ribbon — divert from the balletic grace of the athletes.